Lost and Found Poet #4: Cheng Sait Chia

h3. Cheng Sait Chia: Chinese-Canadian Maritimer Imagist
p. *Rediscovered by George Elliott Clarke*
!((>https://arcpoetry.ca/images/fn_poets/cheng_sait_chia.gif 160w 215h (Cheng Sait Chia 1940-1981, a rediscovered Canadian poet)!
p. Cheng Sait Chia, the Singapore-born, Chinese immigrant whose spare, beautiful poetry should have placed her among the great Canadian imagists, alongside her fellow Maritimer John Thompson, published only one book posthumously, and has never been anthologized, not even in collections of work by Chinese-Canadians, East Coast poets, or Canadian women poets. Cheng died of cancer in 1981, at the age of 41, and her work, though infused by her illness with the theme of death, exhibits an exhilarating refusal of luxury, heroic stoicism, and a stern and bracing morbidity.


h4. About Essayist George Elliott Clarke
p. George Elliott Clarke is the E.J. Pratt Professor of Canadian Literature at the University of Toronto. His critical study _Odysseys Home: Mapping African-Canadian Literature_ (2002) helped to establish the field. Also a revered poet, his newest work is the opera libretto, _Trudeau: Long March/Shining Path_ (2007). His earlier play-in-verse _Whylah Falls_ (1990) was translated into Chinese and published in Beijing in 2006.

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